Samsung’s Note 7 fiasco might cause environmental disaster

After Galaxy Note 7 made a serious damage to reputation and incomes of the leader of the smartphone market Samsung. During the last month, the company announced that they will spend billions to compensate the affected clients who bought the problematic model.

4.3 million Galaxy Note 7 smartphones will be removed. If the South Korean tech company chooses to dump them, it would create the equivalent of about 28 shipping containers of toxic waste, according to the environmental advocacy group. And that doesn’t even include the battery chargers. About 50 elements go into a Note 7, but only 12 can be recycled, due to today’s inefficient recycling methods.

Greenpeace is blasting Samsung for failing to detail how it will dispose of the millions of Note 7 smartphones it’s recalling around the world.

According to German researchers at the Oeko-Institut, the 4.3 million Note 7s that were produced contain more than 20 metric tons of cobalt, more than 1 ton of tungsten, 1 ton of silver, 100 kilograms of gold and between 20 and 60 kilograms of palladium, Greenpeace said.

“These materials could be recovered but will instead end up harming the environment if Samsung doesn’t repurpose or reuse them,”

-the environmental group said in a statement.

Samsung has not publicly stated how it will dispose of the phones, other than to say they would not be repaired or reused. “We have a process in place to safely dispose of the phones,” the company told Vice Media’s Motherboard recently. Samsung did not immediately respond for comment Monday.

The Note 7 fiasco is an opportunity, Greenpeace says, for Samsung and the smartphone industry to change what the group calls an unsustainable economic model.

“They were in a hurry to produce this phone because they wanted to launch it before the iPhone 7, that’s the problem. This model of fast consumption – this is a clear example that it’s not working.”